With 0.75 million shares changed hands, the volume of the stock remained lighter than its average volume of 0.77 million shares. The 52-week range on ASH shows that it touched its highest point at $102.50 and its lowest point at $45.21 during that stretch. It currently has a 1-year price target of $67.78. With its current market cap of 2.21 billion, ASH has annualized dividend of $1.62 while the current yield stands at 3.35%. Beta for the stock currently stands at 0.56.
Price Performance and Earnings:
Stock performance is one of the indicators that investors use to determine whether they will profit from a stock. The price performance of ASH was down-trending over the past week, with a drop of -11.07%, but this was down by -0.74% over a month. Three-month performance dropped to -24.76% while six-month performance fell -42.97%. The stock lost -49.54% in the past year, while it has lost -32.31% so far this year. A look at the trailing 12-month EPS for ASH yields -2.23 with Next year EPS estimates of 4.83. For the next quarter, that number is 1.32. This implies an EPS growth rate of -11.73% for this year and 23.07% for next year. EPS is expected to grow by 7.53% annually over the next five years; however, over the past five years, the company experienced an annual growth rate of -15.86%.
Float and Shares Shorts:
At present, 45.69 million ASH shares are outstanding with a float of 45.16 million shares on hand for trading.
Analysts Ratings:
Reading analyst opinions is an effective way to decide where to invest, and there are several opinions available for ASH since 4 analysts follow the stock currently. There are 4 analysts who recommend BUY ratings, while 0 suggest SELL ratings. Of the remaining analysts, 0 believe that the stock is worth HOLDING, 0 give it an OVERWEIGHT rating, and 0 thinks that it’s UNDERWEIGHT. In the same way, a target price assigned to a stock can also reveal much about its potential.
EPS: Estimates vs Actual
It is also common to use earnings estimates to evaluate a firm’s growth potential and to determine trading strategy. Analysts have provided yearly estimates in a range of $4.53036 being high and $4.28252 being low. For ASH, this leads to a yearly average estimate of $4.45105. Based on analyst estimates, the high estimate for the next quarter is $1.38 and the low estimate is $1.16. The average estimate for the next quarter is thus $1.27.
